


Grubworm

by OxfordOctopus



Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [6]
Category: Homestuck, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Bugs in general I guess, Faygo (Homestuck), Gen, Grubs (Homestuck), Troll Tech, Wetwear, because it is the sinful water of clownish gods, it's just using troll tech as a tinker power, sorry homestuck fellas, this isn't actually a crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 05:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20002804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: Taylor gets Homestuck Troll tech derived powers. Danny is less than thrilled.





	Grubworm

“Taylor,” Dad’s voice was unusually stilted. “We need to talk about – about all of _this_.”

Glancing up to see what dad meant by ‘all of this’ - there was no shortage of things that could fit in that slot - she managed to follow his sweeping hand motion towards the H.I.V.E. She spared him a slow, probing blink, trying to phrase what she was about to say without setting off his parental concern flags.

“I don’t really see what’s wrong with it?” She was elbow-deep in a ‘game grub’ at the moment, to be fair, in large part because she had misaligned one of the connector thorax. “I mean, it’s like, one of the tamer things I could make.”

That was the wrong thing to say, if the wince that crossed her dad’s face was any indication. “I mean, look, dad?” He did. “I’d love to be like Armsmaster or some of the other front page Tinkers, honest. Like? I sure didn’t ask to figure out how to bioengineer, well, _a lot of things_ with the help of vaguely insectoid alien creatures which I butterfly and use as connective tissue in what's turning out to be the horror equivalent of a gameboy.” She clenched her hand down about as hard as it would go, finally relinquishing the - somewhat literal - guts of the stubborn machine and watching as the screen flickered to life, displaying a UI she certainly hadn’t designed and text she probably shouldn’t know how to read. Oh well.

“But – but you can’t just make things like that. I mean, for starters this is our house—” dad sounded real incensed about what he was saying, but for the life of her Taylor could only just barely stop herself from correcting him and saying ‘hive’ “—and as much as I’m starting to find out that not a whole lot of this is dangerous, it’s still, y’know, kinda gross.”

“Are you still hung up on the recuperacoon incident?” Woops, she probably shouldn’t have said that. Dad’s eyes were narrowing into something less than friendly. “I mean, it helps me sleep,” she quickly qualified, washing her hands down with the small bucket - _eugh, never going to be able to look at one of those normally again_ \- before reaching back over to fit the back slot onto the game grub. “Isn’t that most important? You always got on my case for staying up at night _before_.”

“Taylor.” Dad sounded less than pleased. “Can you at least explain to me what, well, _that_ is?”

“Well, I call it H. I. V. E, but my power supplies that it’s an apicultural server as based around apiculture networking.” She was pretty sure her dad froze up there.

“Apiculture? As in bees?” Yeah, that was definitely a worried voice.

“Sheesh dad, c’mon. Of _course_ it’s filled with bees, tons of them, to the gog-damnable _walls_ with bees.” A reminder, either from her power or from putting two and two together, gave her pause. “Don’t eat the honey, it’ll blow your brain out. Also your eyes. Probably your ears too, I’m getting mixed signals actually.”

“Okay, for starters, _gog_?” Dad was privy to one unapologetic shrug for that. Sorry pops, god is dead, all hail gog. “Second, why do you have what I hope are _normal_ bees making mind killing honey?”

“They’re not.” Flicking the game grub to the first one in a stupidly long list, she let the game load. “They’re purple and I _think_ psychic, or at least psychic-adjacent. They’re kind, though, kinder than the grubs that I had to fillet to put this together, anyway.”

“Where do you even _get_ the grubs?” He sounded a bit less worried, maybe because he knew she could kill them. Weird, why would she think that?

“In a spawning colony beneath the house.” It only occurred to her, as her father’s expression warred between horrified and horrendously angry, that she had just blurted that out. Woops. “S’not like I don’t control their creation, dad.”

By the time she glanced back up from her game grub - apparently the game snake was a universal constant, funny that - her dad had long since buried his face into either hand. Poor guy, he just couldn’t get over how neat her stuff was.

“I really don’t want to ask this, but should – should I be worried about anything else?”

Taylor paused at that. He probably should be, in hindsight, she did have plans for an interdimensional battleship, a way to fuse someone’s biology into said battleship so that they can act as a psionic power source, and a few ways to produce what her mind told her was blood but was almost certainly anything but. It’d give her cool mental powers if she replaced all of hers with said blood, she knew, but it’d also make her grow horns and turn grey which was less than ideal. Also she was pretty sure all of them would make her take on some unfortunate trait, like a twenty year life-span, the urge to kill kids, complete and total insanity, a fascination with clowns and clown-related cults, and what felt like the inexplicable need to be out in the sun while sucking people’s blood.

“Uhm. Well.” Dad’s stoic stare didn’t waver, pity that. “I know how to make some refrigerators, house constructing drones, bio-batter collection drones, subjugation drones, some tacky looking battle mechs, husktops, insectoid larvae as a data storage device, and – and wait a sec.” The plans for it briefly flashed across her eyes, was that..?

“Taylor?” He sounded worried, she waved idly at him.

“Maybe uhm. Maybe don’t drink any Faygo in the immediate future.” When she got nothing but a confused look in response, she hastened to clarify. “Like, I just - I just got the plans for Faygo, as in the soda, with the name my brain's giving me _being_ Faygo, in my head. I think every flavor, even some that aren’t even _made_ yet, which leads me to two equally weird conclusions: one, Faygo is so universally tasty - it isn’t - that even my power wants to supply the poor and famished masses with it or, two, Faygo has a purpose beyond tasting somehow like candy, but bad, and we should probably not drink any of it.”

At the very least her dad looked willing enough to agree to that.

“But seriously, get rid of this bee thing.”

“But _daaaaaaaaaaaad!_ ”


End file.
